The Mount Rushmore of the Montreal Expos (and Washington Nationals)

OK, we roll back the clock to 1969 and the bunch of teams that all came into existence that year. One of them, the Montreal Expos, is just a memory at this point. Let’s identify the franchise’s marquis players. Washington Nationals can also be considered, but I don’t think there’s anybody from the modern era even close enough.

Right off, the Expos’ three Hall of Famers (well, two HOFers and one future HOFer) seem like a lock to get on the monument.

Tim Wallach was a great player but during a low period for the franchise. Guerrero is probably going to make the Hall of Fame one day but did a fair amount of damage elsewhere. Larry Walker, too, but up his best-remembered numbers with Colorado.

Now how about that? Pedro is 3rd all time and he played for just a few season with the Expos before the Red Sox stole him. His final season with the ‘Spos in 1997 was the beginning of his incredible run. That year he led the league in ERA, complete games (13!), WHIP, H/9, and K/9. Over the next 5 years, he led the league more often than not in each of those categories, but did so with Boston.

I’m going with Carter, Raines, Dawson, and Steve Rogers over Vlad. Rogers, who pitched his whole career with the Expos, accumulated the 5th most WAR for starting pitchers in the National League in the years 1973-1985. Only Seaver, Niekro, Carlton, and Rick Reuschel had more.

By the way, that’s a ’76 Gary Carter card but the photo is from 1974, the only year he wore #57 for Montreal before changing to #8.

I went with those four too. I find, in general, that Steve Rogers is quite underrated/underappreciated. Not sure why that is. Perhaps he was overshadowed by all the other stars on those Expos teams. Or perhaps it’s his pedestrian W-L record.

BTW, Raines, Dawson, Carter and Rogers are leading the voting right now. And they were also all teammates for a while.

Not quite. Rogers started his career with 18 starts (1973-74) without allowing more than 3 earned runs, tied for third with Dick Lange (1972-74) and Dave Lemonds (1969-72). Ahead of them are Aaron Sele at 21 games (1993-94) and Gary Peters at 25 games (1963), although Peters had 18 relief appearances over 5 seasons prior to his first start. Of those 5 pitchers, only Rogers and Sele had no relief appearances interspersed with their starts.

Just behind them are Tom Murphy (1968) and Stan Coveleski (1918) at 16 games. Included in Murphy’s streak was 50.1 consecutive innings without an extra-base hit allowed, the longest such streak I could find using PI.

I went with Raines, Carter, Vladdy, and El Presidente. Carter is obvious. Raines, while having some good years with the Whitesox, was outstanding for the Expos. His what-should be hall of fame career saw its best years in Montreal. I went with Guerrero because he was an absolute beast in Montreal. Although it seems like he spent more than six seasons there, he is the first player that comes to my mind when I think of the Expos. Dennis Martinez had a great 8 seasons in Montreal and of course the perfect game helps. If Pedro had two or three more years in Montreal, I would have him there. I can also see good reason for Dawson and Rogers. But I have always found Dawson highly overrated and the fact that he wanted to put in the HOF as a Cub makes it an easy choice to leave him off.

I started following baseball in 1977, when the Expos had a pretty good outfield- Dawson, Ellis Valentine, and Warren Cromartie.
My choices for Mt. Rushmore would be Dawson, Rogers, Raines, and Carter.
No question.

I’m for Dawson, Raines, Carter and Steve Rogers as well. I’d love to have bumped one of them for Coco Laboy, who represents the early Expos to me, even more than Staub, but he was just too bad of a ballplayer to even consider it. However, the way the ‘Spos’ public address announcer used to say his name was worth the price of admission, and it remains a fond memory of mine (along with their waaay cool tri-color lid) long after I’ve forgotten the particulars of any single pitching or batting performance put on by Dawson, Raines et al.

This is tough. Carter is obvious, by any measure. I looked at Fangraphs’ WAR for Expos years only and that gave me Raines, Vlad and Zim all very close (about 5.15 WAR per year). But leaves out Dawson at 4.6 per year. But Dawson almost crippled himself playing on that turf and is a HOFer who played his heart out for the Expos.

So, I have to go with Carter, Raines, Vlad and Dawson – today. But, I think Zim will knock Dawson off that list in a few more years especially as the heart and soul of the team since they came to DC.

Rogers was tempting and deserves mention for a great career. But, he was a notch below those other five.